Sorting through old boxes of junk, I found this hand-written poem titled “The Gifts of the Spirit,” from my early graduate school days:
The Angelic Doctor self-described
was a “bat in the sunlight”;
Oh, to feel the warmth of the sun!I am a bat in a blizzard,
fighting every gust of wind
– but who knows where the wind blows,
whence it comes, and whither it goes?
Perhaps to somewhere good.God send right wind!
That was scrawled quickly during the last week of the semester, as I slapped together the dismal last in a series of required essays. Five teachers waited until only four weeks were left in the semester to assign their ten-page papers; knowing that it took me one week to write a good ten-page essay, I saw right away that I would turn in four good papers and one stinker. The above poem was written as I churned out the stinker. It was a hard time in other ways as well.
The funny thing is, all these years later I still resonate with the message of that poem. Life still sends things to all-at-once, I still don’t know where it all goes or where it comes from. God send right wind!
